SuperSize Me: Fat in America

A post by "Miss Pavla" To see more posts click here

It’s not that I didn’t know…but America never ceases to amaze me.

Being born and raised in the Czech Republic, and spending only part of my childhood in America, I got used to hearing Europeans bash Americans for being stupid and fat. It’s one thing to see and hear about it as a kid, and another to actually witness it as an adult.

My fascination with the state of obesity in America began on my recruiting trip in 2005 to my eventual college IPFW. When my would-be head coach states with sarcastic pride, “We have 2 restaurants for every church in Fort Wayne, and a church for every person,” it wasn’t until I heard that Fort Wayne, IN was dubbed the 4th fattest city in America in 2002 that the reality of his statement would hit home.

But as Oprah says, sometimes in life you have “aha” moments, and I had one regarding the state of obesity in America on my plane ride over to Germany while playing professional basketball overseas. It was subtle epiphany. It’s like you get off the plane.  You start wandering the airport.  You head to where ever it was you were staying, to do whatever it is you’re in Europe to do, and then one day it dawns on you; when you’re in the middle of a street corner in downtown [insert your European city of choice here] you realize that nobody there is fat. The peculiarity of this revelation doesn’t hit you until the minute you set foot back into America, in my case, the city of Philadelphia where I got to lay over for a nice three-hour up-close view of obese America.

Why we’re fat

Well for starters, its easy to see that we love eating in America. From the steak-lovin’ open plains of Texas to the 3-ft. cheesesteaks of the City of Brotherly Love, eating is a national past time that we take pride in. I mean for goodness sake, we made competitive eating a sport and it gets about the same airtime on ESPN as lacrosse (sorry to say it, J. Mal, I like lacrosse too)!

According to David Pimentel, “Americans consume 2,175 pounds (990 kilograms) of food every year, which provides 3,600 calories of energy a day€”well above the worldwide average of 2,700 calories a day. To consume no more than the world average, Americans would have to eat a third less than they do.”

And to add insult to injury, our own standard metrics for food consumption are based on a 2,000 calorie diet. So when Europeans call us fat Americans, they are not lying; we eat 900 calories a day more than anyone else in the world. Just to put it into perspective:  It takes the average person 115 calories to run a mile. If we were to, as Americans, “run off” just the excess calories we eat in comparison to the rest of the world for the year, we would have to run almost 2,857 miles. Anyone up for a run from President Obama’s house to lets say, SEATTLE?

In addition, I believe we are the only country in the world that reports a correlation between poverty and obesity. In most African countries, poor people are starving, but in America, poor people are fat. Last year, while watching “Black in America” on CNN, they interviewed an older woman that said she had to ride 45 or so minutes and transfer buses just to buy a tomato, and she lived in a major metropolis like Washington DC.

Why we’re not losing weight

We just don’t move enough in the U.S. - period. While in Europe, if i wanted to get groceries, I had to walk to the store and walk my groceries back, in my hands. I had to walk to practice, I had to walk to the post office, and to my teammates houses, and to the bank, and to the Schlecker ( their version of CVS), etc. Now, I’ll give Americans the fact that public transportation is not readily available like it is in Europe and that the U.S. is vast and requires driving in many places, but that doesn’t change the fact that people drive their cars to the end of their driveways to get their mail, that we have carts at supermarkets to cart around people that are too big to walk, and the fact that we have elevators in buildings with two floors.  Ah, the irony.  Miles of bicycle paths and lanes, bicycle parking, and showers in workplaces encourage Europeans to take to the streets on two wheels. In Copenhagen and Amsterdam, an astonishing one-third of trips to work or around the city are made by bicycle.

The Fat Lifestyle

America is iconized as the land of McDonald’s and the home of the Big Mac. Aside from the amount of food we eat, and our lack of exercise, we eat more pre-packaged, refined, and processed food than any other country. All this food contains less nutrients and much more sodium and saturated fat. We have the least amount of knowledge on nutrition and it baffles me to listen to people say they are changing their diet to get healthy and lose weight and talk about getting on the Atkin’s diet or eating grapefruits and cucumbers for a month.

We (over)indulge ourselves in every aspect of life, and live by the motto, “the bigger the better”. It’s why we double stuff our Oreos, frost our Poptarts and add cheese to just about every entree known to man. We have websites dedicated to our over-the-top eating habits where we glorify our hyper-consumerism. It’s the same problem we have economically, where we have people trying to “keep up with the Joneses” and why for heaven’s sake we have people driving Escalade ESV’s and have no kids or cargo. We just want “more” and “bigger” just for the sake of having it.

What Can we Do

Our eating habits are not just a sociological issue, but an issue of economics and mentality. Part of our “more” mentality is driven by economics because we are constantly being sold on something. The average person sees over 3,000 forms of advertisement in a day, and this number is growing with the internet.  By the end of an average American’s life, he would have spent an entire year JUST watching commercials.

Eat less. Eat locally. Eat organically. Drive less and ride a bike and walk more. Don’t support companies that glorify bad social habits. Turn off the tv, go outside, and pass these habits on to the younger generation, so they don’t continue our old ones.

Udothedishes….(with an energy-saving dishwasher!)

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2. I’ll Tell You Why America Is So Great
3. Soccer in America, a Doubletake
4. Is America Worth fighting for?
5. America & Phones: Clueless Edition?
6. Washington D.C. Metro Area: Most Congested City In America
7. Sarah Palin Celebrates Independence Day by Quitting on America
8. Anheuser-Busch To Be Sold. Is America In Decline?
9. Shame on “The Biggest Loser”
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